Staff and Students from across the Faculty of Arts are warmly invited to join us for the ECLS Halloween Special on Monday 31st October between 12-5pm in the English Department Student Hub (room FAB 5.49) for fireside tales of terror, terrifying dramatisations, short workshops, and more showcasing our Gothic/Horror research and interests!

There is no need to book for those - just dip in and out as per the schedule below.

The ECLS Halloween Special will be followed by a "secret" screening of a Gothic literary adaptation 5-7pm in FAB 0.03 which will require booking a space hereLink opens in a new window.

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Schedule

(The details of each session will be fleshed out in the days leading up the event)

12 -1pm – Gothic Projects

Two PhD students - Mark Gorham and Grace Rhyne - will introduce us to their projects. Mark on the UK as gothic ideology and Grace on Victorian Spiritualism.

1-2pm – Gothic Transformations
The English department student-led Transformations teamLink opens in a new window will introduce the gothic reader and the witches reader produced each year in conjunction with local schools and will delight us with a dramatisation of a gothic scene related to their work.

2 - 2.30pm Fireside Readings
Student-led mini-critical introduction and reading of a Gothic text. Bahirah Sawan (English and Theatre) will give a brief introduction to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and its place as a gothic/horror coming of age tale for children that is also accessible to adults, followed by a reading of a chapter from it.

2.30 - 3pm Fireside Readings
Fareedat Kenyon (English and Theatre) will give a brief introduction to Women of Weird tales and some background to Pulp magazine and their contribution to the modern horror/gothic literature genres followed by a reading from one of those tales

3 - 3.30pm Fireside Readings
Molly Dunne (English and Theatre) will give a creative introduction on the intertextuality between “The Skriker” by Caryl Churchill and “The Erl King” by Angela Carter with a dramatic reading.

3.30 - 4pm Fireside Readings: Minor Hauntings
Dr Jen Baker will introduce and read from her British Library Tales of the Weird volume, Minor Hauntings published in 2021.

4 - 4.50pm Gothic pop-up books: A mini-workshop
Join Dr Jen Baker and student Beck Chilcott (Literature and Philosophy) to learn about and play with a host of Gothic pop-up books and some of the ways in which we can use them to challenge ideas of what is a book and what is literary, how they fit in to the Gothic tradition, as well as the pedagogical perspectives they offer!

5 - 7pm Secret Cinema (FAB 0.03) (booking required - follow this linkLink opens in a new window)
Screening of a Literary Adaptation of a Gothic text

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